Remarks at the Professional Football Hall of Fame Annual Banquet in Canton, Ohio.

Mr. Commissioner, all of the distinguished guests both here on the platform and in the audience:

This is a very special evening for me because, first, I am glad to be in Canton, and to see so many friends in this very friendly city; second, because for me football is perhaps my second vocation.

It is true, as was mentioned a few moments ago, that I not only said that I would like to have the Commissioner's job--would you like to have mine?--but I also have said that since we have made an award tonight to Joe King ¹ that if I had my life to live over again I would like to be a sportswriter or a sportscaster. The trouble is, I could never make the deadlines.

Then, too, as I look back over the years, I think of the fact that when anyone reaches the very high position in government you will find that he is often introduced and his past is really built up. A lot of mythology grows up about your past, sometimes bad, sometimes good. One bit of mythology I want to put to rest tonight is with regard to my own reason for being so interested in football, something that I guess is rather generally known across the country.

¹ Joseph P. King was awarded the Dick McCann Memorial Award for over 30 years of distinguished writing on professional football for various New York newspapers.

The late Harry Wismer, who was a sportscaster in Washington and later went on to New York, once introduced me when I was Vice President. And he really got carried away. He said, "I want to introduce the Vice President of the United States, a great football fan, a former All-American." Well now, I really want to tell the truth about that particular matter. I really wasn't an All-American. I didn't even make the team at Whittier.

I do want to say though that as I listened tonight to this program my memories were carried back through the years to the games I have read about through the years. And I have read about all of those, those which I have not had the opportunity to see either on television or in person and also the games I have seen.

Just to correct the record on a couple of things--and I would very much hesitate to try to correct Kyle Rote because he always has the last word; he is a sportscaster, you know, and he will get back. But somebody asked me--Frank Gifford did a moment ago when I was being interviewed, prior to coming over here, for a program tomorrow on ABC--as to what team a President of the United States is for. And I said he is for whatever team from whatever town he is in. That means, of course, if I am in Los Angeles I am for the Rams, or in Washington, where I presently live, for the Redskins. But speaking for the Redskins, and also commenting upon the Giants because I did live in New York for a while, Kyle, I saw those Giants play many times. And anybody who is in New York City and follows the Giants-and I was there in the period before the Jets came along--they did have a great defensive team with Andy Robustelli, a magnificent defensive end as has already been mentioned, but don't say that they didn't have also a good offensive team. After all, I remember Y. A. Tittle when he was throwing passes to Del Shofner and to Frank Gifford, and Frank Gifford also running. That was a pretty good offensive team, don't you think so, Kyle?

We also can remember the Washington Redskins, and that allows me to comment on a very great pro who lives here in Canton, Marion Motley. I remember when we were rooting for the Washington Redskins back in the fifties that it always seemed that the Cleveland Browns had a great fullback that would tear us to pieces. You can see I am a partisan--tear us to pieces. And Marion Motley was that fullback, year after year after year. Then we got the good news: Marion Motley was retiring. Next year will be for us. Then the next year Jim Brown came along, and he tore right up the same holes that Marion Motley used to go through. And we remembered that through those years, these great fullbacks from Cleveland, and they left memories which I must say were somewhat envious but also with a great deal of respect.

I think, too, of the fact that tonight as I was reading over the various biographies of the players, ,that Bruiser Kinard was referred to as a man who played in the era when he went both ways. That impressed me. I couldn't even go one way. But I think of him and I saw him here tonight and I shook hands with him. And I realized he probably could handle an assignment on some teams I have seen even at the present time.

But just let me say this about professional football before turning to the subject I particularly think should be touched upon briefly tonight in the position that I represent, speaking for all of the Americans who are football fans and all who want to pay their respects to this Hall of Fame:

We have honored tonight a number of players and we have also honored a very great coach, Vince Lombardi. No one could add to the eloquence of Wellington Mara.² We think of Vince Lombardi and what he meant to his teams in, of course, New York and then at Green Bay, and finally in Washington.

²President and owner of the New York Giants professional football team, who had presented the names of Vince Lombardi and Y. A. Tittle for induction in the Hall of Fame.

We also think of what he meant to America. And we are reminded of what coaches generally have meant to each of us who happen to have gone out for football, for those who made the team and really became All-Americans, great players, great stars in the Hall of Fame.

And for the many more like myself who went out, we tried, we sat on the bench or ran the opponent's plays. I knew the opponent's plays better than I knew our own, I can assure you. We then, however, went out for the game and perhaps never made the team, but some way, somehow, those coaches had influences on our lives.

For example, I noted that as I went through the Hall of Fame that Jim Thorpe is the man whose statue is first there. He played on that first pro football team here in Canton. He was an American Indian. My coach in college at Whittier was an American Indian. He was a graduate of the University of Southern California, Frank Gifford's school. He was an All-American at USC .the year that USC played Penn State in the Rose Bowl. I am not telling you who won that game. I have enough trouble in Penn State already by naming Texas number one.

Chief Newman, my coach, an American Indian, produced some very fine teams at that small, little college at Whittier. We won a lot of games. But he also left a legacy to all of those who came in contact with him that stayed with us and meant something to us the rest of our lives. We were better men because we knew him, because of what he taught us.

lie was a hard driver. He was a great disciplinarian. There was no permissiveness as far as he was concerned. There were no excuses for failure. He didn't feel sorry for you when you got knocked down. He had a different definition of being a good loser. He said, "You know who a good loser is? It's somebody who hates to lose and who gets up and comes back and fights again."

I think, perhaps, as I look back at those who shaped my own life--and there are a great deal of similarities between the game of football and the game of politics--that I learned a great deal from a football coach who not only. taught his players how to win but who also taught them that when you lose you don't quit, ,that when you lose you fight harder the next time.

That, of course, is what a nation needs to know. It is what all of us need to know at this time in this country. I think as we think of men like Vince Lombardi, Chief Newman, the thousands of other coaches, Bruiser Kinard, others who have left their mark on America's young men, either by reason of the fact that they have played for them or by reason of the fact that those in the stands have seen the spirit that they have been able to infuse among those players--I think as we think of that, we can think of what that should mean and can mean to America at this time in our history.

On such an evening as this, so full of fun and so full of nostalgia, so full of respect for the past and looking to the future of next season and who is going to win, let me just leave one very serious thought with this audience with regard to where America is going in these next few years.

We are entering what I believe is going to be an era of peace for America. I hope it will be, and I believe there is a better chance than at any time in this century that it will be--peace for a whole generation, something we have not had in this century.

We are ending a war in which we are presently engaged, ending it in a way that will contribute to a lasting peace. I am making a journey to a country in which one-fourth of the people in the world live, making that journey not so much because it will affect my generation, although it may, but because, as I look to the generations in the future, we cannot have peace in this world and have one-fourth of the people in the world isolated from the world community. We must know them. They must know us. And that is why that journey for peace is being undertaken.

But having undertaken that journey, and looking around the world, and with the prediction, or at least the hope that this prediction may come true, that we are entering an era of peace for our generation and perhaps the next generation, so that these young people, sons and daughters of those in the Hall of Fame, can enjoy that peace, let us recognize that that does not mean that it is a time when it is going to be easy for us, when we can rest on our oars. Because what peace then means is: What do we do with it?

In that connection, I would say that while America is entering very possibly a period of peace such as we haven't enjoyed in this century, it will be a period of enormous challenge, because all over the world--800 million Chinese, 250 million Russians, 300 million Europeans, 250 million in Latin America, 700 million in South Asia, another 200 million on the rim of Asia--there are people all over the world who are becoming more competitive.

I first came to Canton 22 years ago. Frank Bow will remember that visit, and others may remember it. I was a Congressman at the time, and at that time Americans could look at the world and say, "We are number one," without any question. We were number one from a standpoint of military strength; we were number one from the standpoint of our economic power, and no one in the world could possibly, at that time, challenge us.

At the present time the United States is still the strongest nation in the world, and we are still the richest nation in the world. But we must remember that in those past 21 years we have the nations of Western Europe, completely recovered from World War II, competing with us. We have the potential competition of 800 million in China, and all of these other nations that I have mentioned; the competition from Japan, the competition from the Soviet Union. This, however, should not be considered by Americans to be simply a problem that we wish would go away.

What it reminds us, simply, is this fact: It sometimes is said these days that it doesn't make any difference whether you are number one or not. Let me tell you, it makes a great deal of difference, not simply because we want to be number one so that somebody else can be number two in the world, but because unless you try to do your best, unless you give everything that you have to your life and in the service of your country, then you have not been the man or the woman that you can be. And for America at this time, when we are still the first nation in the world, to rest on our laurels and to let the other nations that are competing with us pass us by, this is something that we cannot let happen and that we should not let happen.

That brings me back to the game of football, to our coaches, to the players who are examples. I think what football and other sports mean to, and what they contribute to, millions of us who are fans-more than the recreation, more than the enormous spectator sport that it is--is the spirit, a spirit of competition, a spirit of trying to do our very best, a spirit of when we lose of trying to win the next time out, and a spirit, may I say also, of being for our team, all the way, strong for it.

I think it is great for the Giant fans to be for the Giants and for the Bengal fans to be for the Bengals, and the Browns fans to be for the Browns. I think it is great, too, for Americans to be for America, all the way.

So, if we learn from football to be for our team, for our town, for our country, then that is a good thing. Oh, I don't mean that our country is perfect, but I have traveled to most of the nations of the world and just let me remind us all of this great truth. Go anyplace else; you will enjoy it. But you will, when you come back to America, say, "I am glad that I am an American," because in no nation of the world is there more opportunity; in no nation of the world is there more freedom; in no nation in the world are there better jobs, better wages, a better income, a better life than in America.

There are a lot of things to improve about it, but the greatness of this country is that we have a system in which, where we don't like what we find, we can change it and we can improve it.

So, I would leave this final passing thought with you tonight on my first visit--and I hope not my last--to this Hall of Fame. In the spirit of American football at its best, let's always try to be number one, because we owe it to ourselves, we owe it to our country.

Second, in the spirit of American football, let's be for our team, let's be for our country. As we look at this country, when we hear people say America is an ugly country, let's stand up and answer. Let's say this is a beautiful country, and the glory of it is that we have the great opportunity to make it even more beautiful in the years to come.

Thank you.